


See It Through

by thelittlegreennotebook



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlegreennotebook/pseuds/thelittlegreennotebook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She almost physically reeled away from him; the confidence, the cockiness—Lydia was practically allergic to it. But then there was that silly smile again, that uninhibited, totes dorky, almost-unattractive-but-way-too-freaking-infectious-to-be-anything-but-butterfly-inducing smile. And she realized that this guy was probably more of a dopey, adorable geek than anything. It made her hesitate in her rejection. She looked at his limber frame again. A runner, maybe. Maybe not, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See It Through

**Author's Note:**

> Went into the coffee shop with a Dizzie idea and the rain as my inspiration, came out four hours later with this. I hope you enjoy! *EDIT* (11/6): I wrote this pre-Sanditon, so Gigi's boytoy's name was originally Alexander (a problem for obvious reasons). Now I can rest easier knowing this is at least a little cannon-compliant.

They met in the university library, of all places, and maybe if Lizzie were anything like her younger sister she would never let Lydia live that down. The youngest Bennet was waiting for a book to be checked back in; it was a book she had wanted to read for nearly three weeks now (yeah, okay, she reads now—it wasn’t a big _deal_ or anything, all right?), and Lydia was growing forever frustrated with whoever seemed to be thwarting her progress through Austen’s classic novels. She had even made the poor student who worked at the desk promise to text her if he caught wind of the book returning to the premises. But despite the fact that it was the first time Lydia had given out her number to a guy in over a year (an undergrad freshman, but a member of the male population nonetheless), and therefore deserved some kind of reward, there had been no such luck.

And so, Lydia had taken to camping out at the table right near the alcove where Austen’s works could be accessed when she did her schoolwork. She was in grad school now (falling in love with reading wasn’t her choice, it was Mary’s, but going to grad school was all Lydia’s idea), and truly learning what it was to balance her free time and her studies.

It was hard, but not as impossible as she expected it to be. Jeez, it wasn’t as if she was camping out amongst the books on Saturday nights. _That_ would be lame.

Finally, four weeks after she had first inquired after the book, she got lucky. Which was sort of unfortunate for the guy who had finally took it upon himself to return it.

“What book is that?” she nearly ( _nearly_ ) snapped at said college student, who was scanning the shelves to find the book’s rightful place. He was wearing khaki cargo shorts and a royal blue crew neck t-shirt, which hung from his tall, athletic frame.

“Oh,” he said, startled. “I was—they asked me to return it right away to the shelf because some crazy redhead had…been…” Lydia propped her hands on her hips with her eyebrows raised expectantly. “Let me guess,” he continued. “You’re the crazy redhead who’s been hounding poor Phil down at the desk for nearly four weeks.”

“And let me guess,” Lydia responded irritably. “You’re the insufferable book-napper who’s been holding that one hostage for just as long.”

He grinned at her—a big, crooked, goofy grin—and Lydia (ask her why, and she would _not_ be able to explain it) felt oddly…sparkly. And _yes_ , she knew that she couldn’t feel _sparkly_ , but that is the only way she could describe it, and “please shut up Mary, you’re being totes annoying.”

“That’s me,” he proclaimed proudly, holding out the book. “And I believe _this_ belongs to you. For now. It’s a library, you know. No matter how badly you might want to, you can’t actually keep the books.”

“Took you nearly four weeks to figure that one out, did it?” she said, taking the book from him delicately, despite how she wanted to snatch it up desperately. “And hey, why were you reading _Emma_ anyway?”

He shrugged his shoulders, flashing her that doofus smile again. “Maybe if you let me buy you a cup of coffee, I’ll tell you.”

She almost physically reeled away from him: the confidence, the cockiness—Lydia was practically allergic to it. But then there was that silly smile again, that uninhibited, totes dorky, almost-unattractive-but-way-too-freaking-infectious-to-be-anything-but-butterfly-inducing smile. And she realized that this guy was probably more of a dopey, adorable geek than anything. It made her hesitate in her rejection.

She looked at his limber frame again. A runner, maybe.

Maybe not, though.

“I-I can’t,” she responded, her heart and head clashing over the words.

 

 

 

He shrugged his shoulders, not phased. “All right. I’ll see you around then. Enjoy the book.”

 

 

 

* * *

Lydia is just on her way to thinking she would (enjoy the book, that is), when a wrench is thrown in her plans. She’s sitting in a huge, comfy chair in the student union, her feet propped up on a large ottoman that two armchairs share in a (mostly) quiet corner of the establishment.

“Is anyone sitting here?” comes a voice, prying Lydia’s attention away from Mr. Knightley. She glances up to see the book-napper hovering above her with a cup of coffee and the newspaper.

“Um, no,” she says truthfully, reflexively, before she realizes she probably should have lied. What is this guy, stalking her?

“Great,” he says, before sitting down and placing his cup on the small wooden table between the chairs. He stretches out his long, gangly legs until they rest on the ottoman as well, mere inches from hers.

After a few minutes she realizes that she’s staring at him and the way he just made himself at home in a place as public as a student union, no questions asked. 

“Sorry,” she says unapologetically. “But I def remember saying no to that cup of coffee yesterday.” Maybe it’s rude, but the last thing she needs in her life is a stalker.

He picks up his coffee and takes a sip, almost pointedly, before setting it down and looking around him with a mock-confused expression on his face. “I… _I_ don’t see two cups of coffee, do you?” he asks, and she knows he’s being cheeky because there’s that grin again.

She heaves a sigh and turns her attention back to her book.

“I can buy you one though,” he presses. “If you’d like.”

She doesn’t even look up. “I’m good, thanks.”

 

 

 

Silence falls, but she’s aware of his presence the entire time.

* * *

“You said no _again_?” Mary asks incredulously over the phone.

“He’s totes stalking me!” Lydia squeals indignantly from the couch in her apartment, where she’s blowing her nails dry.

“He asking to buy you coffee, Lydia,” Mary admonishes, “not to jump into his white van.”

“Do they ever _ask_ you to jump into a white van?”

Mary heaves a sigh. “It’s not Lydia against the male population, remember?”

 _Isn’t it?_ Lydia wants to ask bitterly, but she doesn’t. “I know that,” she tells Mary. “I do.”

“You should let him buy you coffee next time,” Mary says.

Lydia snorts. “Puh-lease. There’s no next time. I left pronto. If he hasn’t gotten the message by now, he’s an idiot. I don’t want to have coffee with an idiot.”

* * *

“How do you take your coffee?” he asks her a week later (if this college has tracking devices in the IDs, they should have really said so before she applied) when she’s back at the library.

“How do you _find_ me?” Lydia asks loudly, and she would be scared if he didn’t look like the most innocent puppy on the planet. His eyes are hazel, she notices.

“Answer my question first,” he challenges, running a hand through his sun-kissed brown hair.

She tenses her jaw indignantly. “I drink tea. Now how did you find me?”

For some reason, he evidently takes this as an invitation to sit down at her table. “Hate to break it to you, but anyone could spot that red hair of yours from miles away.”

“That’s the most illegit thing I’ve ever heard. You can’t see me through the library walls from miles away,” she tells him, wishing for the first time that her hair wasn’t so eccentric.

“You’re right,” he nods. “That’s where the fact that you and I have similar tastes in favorite campus locations comes in.”

She scoffs, because the library is hardly her _favorite_ location. She might be growing and learning and whatever else Jane and Lizzie spew at her, but she’ll forever love parties, and she’ll forever love being tucked away in her own bed. Those are her favorite locations. Not that she’s going to tell _him_ that.

He presses forward. “But more importantly, you drink _tea?_ Coffee is so much better.”

She wrinkles her nose involuntarily. She remembers trying coffee that past summer, when she was visiting Lizzie and Darcy. Darcy always had coffee, black, and Lydia, thinking maybe her tastes had changed, tried a tiny bit from the pot one morning. And yeah, it was still disgusting.

“You don’t grow up in my house hating tea. Tea solves everything,” Lydia tells him, wondering why she’s still talking but also needing to faithfully defend her drink of choice. It’s one of the main things she and her sisters have in common.

“Everything, you say?”

 

 

 

“Yes,” she confirms. “But if you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to read.”

* * *

“You’re being ridiculous,” Gigi says over Skype a week later.

Lydia rolls her eyes and winces from her headache. “I’m not. He’s _stalking_ me, Gig.”

“Sorry if I don’t take that to heart, but the definition of stalking has new standards when you have a brother who actually organized a fake business trip to follow a girl to a company.”

Lydia giggles into her hand at the memory. “True. How are they, by the way? I haven’t talked to Lizzie in almost two weeks.”

Gigi shrugs. “Will they ever be anything but in love?” she wonders. “Fighting or not, around each other or not, I feel like that’s how we can always describe them.”

“A little too deep for my hangover, babe,” Lydia says, squinting against the dull ache of her head.

Gigi laughs. “Sorry. If you’re really curious, then I’d tell you not to be surprised if a ring makes an appearance soon. But don’t tell William I told you.”

Lydia’s eyes widen. “Seriously?”

Gigi nods. “Next couple of months, maybe,” she speculates. “But back to you. Get that show on the road, missy.”

“Easy for you to say,” Lydia responds, taking a sip of water. “How _is_ Sidney, by the way?”

The redhead can see her friend’s blush even through the grainy resolution of the video chat, and she knows that, for now, she’s off the hook.

* * *

The next time Lydia runs into him is three weeks after her conversation with Gigi, and she’s at a party. Maybe she actually should be freaked out, because even the most seemingly innocent of people can be threatening (doesn’t she know it). But something about her two sisters falling in love with irreparable abandon nudges her towards believing (if just for tonight) in fate.

So this time, she’s the one to initiate the conversation. Blame the tequila.

“This has to stop happening,” she deadpans, sidling up to where he stands next to the keg. He turns to her with a smile that is the tipsy sort of too wide.

“Au contraire,” he says. “I rather enjoy encountering you.”

“Does alcohol make you talk with sophisticated language?” she asks.

“I could ask the same thing, Miss ‘Def’ and ‘Illegit,’” he counters.

She shrugs one shoulder and grabs a red cup from the counter behind him. “I don’t apologize for how I talk.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” he says, and it’s this little hint at a future that freaks her out, but also sort of brings her to a decision. Blame the tequila.

“Tomorrow at the union.” she provides. “You can buy me tea.”

He raises his eyebrows, and Lydia gets a little glimpse at the possibility that he isn’t as confident as he might appear. So join the club. She also realizes (vaguely—blame the tequila) that she doesn’t even know this kid’s name.

“You’ll get over your hangover by eleven?” he questions.

She gives a too-loud laugh. “I used to live with a permanent hangover,” she admits, because, hell, she’s not going to do this under any false pretenses. She’s Lydia Bennet, take it or leave it. 

“Eleven, then.”

* * *

“You’re late,” she says in a bored tone, hoping it conveys the fact that he really shouldn’t mess with her like this. Making her question if he’s sincere isn’t the best of tactics when it comes to Lydia.

He’s holding two paper cups and slides into the chair across the too-small table.

“Ah,” he says. “But I’m eleven minutes late.”

“And that excuses you somehow?”

“Well, I’m looking at it this way,” he explains. “It’s eleven-eleven, and today’s date is the eleventh.”

“So?”

“So, if today becomes our anniversary, I’d like to have some continuity.”

“You seem pretty confident,” she remarks, trying to ignore the feeling that’s telling her to run away. It eases a bit when he throws her that crooked smile again.

“I need to be, if you’re going to agree with what I have planned next.”

“And what’s that?”

He pushes her cup towards her gently.

“Coffee.”

* * *

“You drank coffee for him?” Jane asks excitedly from the other end of the line.

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Hardly _for_ him,” she argues. “I was hung over, and I’d be stupid to deny that coffee is said to help with hangovers.”

“You’ve been hung over plenty of times, and not once have you drank coffee as a remedy,” Jane points out smugly, and Lydia recalls the time when Lizzie said that New Jane is pushy. “What’s his name?”

“Matt,” Lydia supplies easily.

“Matt what?” Jane presses.

“I’m not going to let you Facebook stalk him, Jane,” Lydia says.

Jane hums contentedly and Lydia can hear keystrokes. “No, but Facebook is going to let me Facebook stalk him. You became friends with him…two weeks ago. Lydia Bennet when was this date?”

“It wasn’t a _date,_ loser,” Lydia insists. “And it was three weeks ago.”

“Oh, my God, and I’m only hearing about this _now_?” Jane asks.

“I haven’t really told anyone yet,” Lydia says. “Not even Lizzie. Not that I necessarily _would_ tell Lizzie before you, but—“

“It’s all right,” Jane says. “I understand. She’s very much the more actively protective sister. I have a feeling she might hunt this guy down and interrogate him.”

Lydia winces. That’s what she was thinking.

“She’ll still be extremely happy for you though,” Jane reminds her. “Just like I am.”

Lydia smiles. “Thanks Jane, but it’s hardly going to go anywhere. We’ve only been on two coffee…outings.”

“Two?” Jane exclaims. “ _Two?”_

Lydia realizes, not for the first time, that she needs to learn when to shut up.

* * *

The weeks kind of fly by, and soon enough Lydia discovers that she’s been with Matt for five months.

 _Five months_.

Five months of coffee dates (he was reading _Emma_ for his little sister), and real dates (they both love sushi), and laughing up a storm (he’s funny—a dork, but funny) and getting kicked out of the library way too many times for making out in the stacks (but only just making out, and that’s okay). She finds herself tangled into his life in a multitude of ways, as if his gangly limbs grabbed hold of her heart and knotted her into his existence with ease. She’s stumbling through this _thing_ that they have as figuratively as he stumbles literally, over his own feet with the clumsiest of gaits, which she can’t believe because, yeah, he is a runner and, seriously, how do they even let someone so uncoordinated compete in any sport?

His goofy confidence and silly spark compliment her vivacious personality in the most sensible of ways, and his mouth quirks up at the corners every time she talks with acronyms or abbreviations. Mary is happy for her and Gigi is happy for her and Jane is _happiest_ , the eldest Bennet insists, but Lizzie…well, Lizzie doesn’t quite _know_ yet (oh, she _knows_ , but not from Lydia. It makes for some supremely awks phone conversations, during which Lydia pointedly avoids the topic and Lizzie drops some menacing hints. But Lydia can’t be anything but honest with Lizzie and the unspoken truth is that she thinks she’s falling way too fast and way too blindly).

It hits her a little belatedly that this is longer than…well, than _anything_ legitimate has lasted for her, and it scares her. Like, can’t-fall-asleep-ever scares her.

Matt still doesn’t know…about George Wickham, that is, and part of her knows that she doesn’t have to tell him, not yet. But another part of her feels that, scary as it is, this is something _real,_ and Matt is everything that she never knew she would _ever_ want in a guy. That seems to run in the Bennet clan (at least for her and Lizzie, because Bing was pretty much everything Jane had ever dreamed of in a guy).

As it is, she falters, and the first time they fight is shortly after she realizes that, you know, it’s been a long time since eleven-eleven on the eleventh. The knowledge is messing with her head.

“You can’t?”

“No, sorry,” she says, kinda quiet, because she’s stuck in her own world, the dark sliver of it that sometimes pulls her under, and she never wants to have to tell him why.

“I thought we had plans tonight.”

“W-we _did_ , but…”

“Lydia, if you want to spend a night alone, that’s fine,” he tells her gently. “You can just say so.”

Something about the way he reads the situation so accurately bothers her. He’s being nothing but kind, and cautious, and perfect, but it scares her. Lydia knows all too well that perfection doesn’t exist—any conceived notion of it comes with a lot of baggage. Baggage that can pile up and smother her in the time it takes to hang up a phone and sit down beside her sister in the den. And then the next thing she know the perfection is shattered along with everything she ever believed about the world.

“It’s not that, it’s just…”

“What?” he asks, and she can hear that this is what he’s been trying to get at for a while. This dark place is something in her that he’s noticed, and she hates that it’s become a part of who she is. “I don’t mean to pry, but…Lydia, I want you to be able to talk to me about anything. I want to be here for you.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she insists, not convincingly.

There’s silence on the other end. Matt hates, _hates_ dishonesty. “And you don’t have to lie to me either.”

“I’m not,” she lies indignantly, frustrated that he doesn’t believe her but understanding why he can’t.

“Yes, you are. I know that you are,” Matt says. “You can just be honest. You can just say ‘Matt, I don’t want to hang out with you tonight,’ or ‘Matt, I don’t want to talk about it,’ or ‘Matt, maybe this is moving a little fast.’”

He nails each of her concerns on the head, and it frightens her more than anything up to this point in their relationship.

“Matt, I’m _not_ lying,” she says, her voice rising in protest. “I can’t believe you don’t believe me.”

“Lydia, do you think I don’t notice when you’re quiet, or sad? Because I do, I see it, and I know you try to hide it. You’ve cancelled three dates in the past three weeks. And I don’t care, okay? I don’t care if you’re damaged, or scared, or whatever it is that you are, I just want to figure out what I can do to help. All I ever want to do is help.”

“You can’t,” she informs him loudly, not caring that she just gave away that there’s something she might need help _with_. “You can’t help, okay?”

It’s too much—it’s too flawless of an offer. Getting and getting and getting always has consequences, always has now-do-me-this-favor’s, and Matt hasn’t asked for anything in return, yet. Yet.

She hates that she can’t get past the belief that he _will_ , that the day is going to come along when he’s tired of helping and wants something in return. Something that she can’t give him—she doesn’t even want to ever find out what the _something_ could be, not after what it was last time: a tape and the destruction of her heart.

“Why are you pushing me away?” His voice has never once risen, and she realizes that this is the way he argues, this is how he fights. She never knew that about him, and it’s probably the last thing she’ll ever learn, too.

“Because that’s what people do, Matt,” she informs him. Isn’t it her job now to spread the message? That’s what it feels like, sometimes. “They push you away. They leave.”

“I won’t,” he promises.

“I don’t believe you,” she whispers.

And that’s that.

* * *

“Lizzie, hey sis!” Too chipper, way too chipper.

“Hey, Lydia.” Her voice is toneless.

She winces. Not that she didn’t expect…well, this. Lizzie isn’t mad, but she isn’t making things easy. Lydia knows that.

“I, um—I kind of need your help with something.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she pauses, but Lizzie makes no reply. “Well…there’s this guy.”

“A guy? Really?” Lizzie says, her voice jokingly excited. But still not mad. Never mad. “Wow, that’s great Lydia! I’m so happy for you! I wonder…is this guy named Matthew Thompson, age twenty-three, looking for a PhD in mechanical engineering and, maybe, just maybe, a cross country runner?”

Lydia sucks in a breath. “Look, Lizzie, I’m really sorry for not telling you myself. I’m really, really, sorry, but I just need to talk to you about it because…”

The whole thing comes pouring out of her. Every detail that she’s been holding back from Mary and Gigi and Jane shows no boundaries when it comes to Lizzie. She talks about how she and Matt met, and their coffee (and tea) dates, and their real dates, and their first kiss, and how he makes her laugh harder than she can remember, and how he waits for her so patiently about _everything_ , and how he’s perfect-too-perfect. She finds herself going into disgustingly specific detail about his green-brown eyes and his sun-kissed brown hair that curls at the end if he grows it out too long.

And then, taking a deep breath, she talks about the fight. About how she’s scared, how she’s scared out of her mind, and how she’s falling for this guy with the gangly legs and the crooked smile way too fast and way too blindly and “Lizzie what in the freaking hell do I do?”

There’s a small pause on the other end, a very thoughtful, Lizzie-esque pause, but Lydia knows she’s been listening with rapt attention the entire time. She expects questions. She expects a therapist-like “well, what do you think you should do?” but instead she gets something that she’s been waiting forever to hear without knowing it’s what she was waiting for at all. And immediately she knows why she called Lizzie, why she waited so long to talk to Lizzie, as if she knew she would find herself there, five months later, willing her older sister to say the words. And Lizzie says them as if she knows that, too.

“Lydia, he’s not George Wickham.”

Lydia’s heart seizes up in her chest for a second. “I know that.”

“No, Lydia, I don’t think you do.” And she’s right, of course. “I need you to listen to what I’m saying: Matt is _not_ George Wickham.”

Her heart freezes again, but when it releases she thinks that she can breathe just a little bit easier. “But—“

“He’s not George Wickham, Lydia.”

Definitely a bit easier, now.

“I’m just—“ and this time, Lizzie doesn’t interrupt her. “I’m so scared. I didn’t expect…I didn’t expect this. Not so…” is it _soon_ , really? “fast. It’s all really fast. I didn’t think the first relationship I had after…that—“ she takes a deep breath, “after _George_ , would be so…I need more time to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not.”

“Do you think it’s real? Do you think what you have with Matt is real?”

Quietly: “Yes.”

“Then I think it is, too.”

“But last time…”

“Last time you were a completely different person, Lydia. _Completely_ different. And not in a bad way,” Lizzie assures her, “just in a different way. You need to trust yourself.”

“A little bit easier said than done, sis.”

Lizzie lets out a soft laugh. “I know,” she says comfortingly, and Lydia knows that it’s true—that she _does_ know, that she can relate.

“How did you do it?” Lydia asks. “How did you know you could trust yourself?”

“I—“ Lizzie falters, because if there’s one thing she’s unsure about, it’s how she ended up in the place she is today. “I don’t know, really. I _didn’t_ know that I could, even then. But it felt…it felt like I would be stuck with these feelings for the rest of my life, whether I did something about it or not, so I might as well take the risk.”

And that’s how Lydia feels, now: like she’ll have those feelings towards Matt for the rest of her life.

“Lizzie?”

“Mmm?”

“What if it doesn’t last forever?”

“Then you keep going,” Lizzie says automatically, without thinking, like it’s the easiest answer. “And you survive. And if there’s one person in the world who I know can do that, it’s you.”

Lydia feels her heart swell with gratitude, but there’s still one nagging question.

“And if I screwed up? If it’s over already?”

“Does it feel over?”

A pause. “No.”

“Then it’s not.”

* * *

Lydia’s about to open the door when there’s a knock from the other side. She hasn’t even bothered to change out of her sweats and a tank-top, because if Matt’s going to take her back it won’t matter whether she looks fantabulous or not.  She opens it cautiously and finds him standing there, one hand wrapped around a dozen stems and the other grasping a tall paper cup that has a tagged string hanging out of it.

 _Tea solves everything_ , she can hear herself saying all those months ago, and her heart squirms.

She looks at him, stunned. “You’re here,” is what stupidly drops from her lips.

He takes that as an invitation to walk right in, and she remembers the day when they first sat in the student union, how he made himself right at home with his propped up feet and his cup of coffee and his newspaper. She thinks that, somehow, he’s made a home for himself in her heart as well, and when did that happen?

“I’m sorry,” are the first words out of his mouth, and she’s snapped back to the here and now. “I didn’t mean to push, and I know that I shouldn’t be angry when you want to take some time to yourself, but all I want to do is be there for you. And if that means not being around you for a couple of days, that’s okay, but I wish you’d just _tell_ me so that I wouldn’t royally fuck this up, because I think this is something that I really need to not fuck up. So I’m here,” he says unnecessarily, and continues, “and I love you.”

Her heart stops (it stopped when she first opened the door, really) and her breath freezes in her lungs.

“I—“

“You don’t have to say it back right now, or ever, but I just…needed to let you know, because I do love you, and I’m not going to let one fight—our first fight—get in the way of that.”

“N-no,” she stammers, still backtracking. “I…you’re here.” She’s never felt like a bigger idiot in her life. “You’re here…fighting for me.”

It’s a little awkward, because that’s not something that she would normally say out loud, just acknowledge. His eyebrows knit together adorably.

“Yeah,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like he’ll always be there, like he’ll always fight for her. She realizes that maybe that's why she took a chance on him in the beginning: he always came back around again.

_He’s not George Wickham._

And maybe in a month or two, she’ll take him to meet Lizzie and Darcy (who live the closest, and deserve a visit the most) and she’ll rave over Lizzie’s ring and watch as Lizzie and her fiancée see everything that Lydia has been talking about, from the quirky confidence to the dopey smile. When they get home, something about Lizzie and Darcy’s chance at forever will prompt her to tell him all about that other part of her life, her past, something that will stay with her forever. He’ll hold her for a long time, wrapped in his lanky arms, and tell her over and over again that he won’t ever do that to her. And she’ll believe him, because he’s not George Wickham. He’s just not.

But for now, she kisses him, _really_ kisses him, and knows that this is what Lizzie meant when she said to trust herself, because it feels like she’s exploding and she figures it probably always will. And even if this isn’t forever, it’s better than anything she can foresee, and Lydia’s going to trust it until she has a reason not to. Maybe that’s all he ever wanted: her trust in return for his help. Could she be so lucky?

“I love you, too,” she whispers against his lips, and feels his arms tighten around her waist. The stems from the flowers are digging into the small of her back a little, but she doesn’t mind. Maybe this won’t last forever, but she wants to see if it can. And if it doesn’t, at least Lydia knows that Lizzie is right: all she needs is to trust that she can survive.          

**Author's Note:**

> I literally smiled when I finished this, with a close scrape of 1% battery left on my computer, so I’m just forever grateful that you even made it to the end (although there are probably lots of errors). I’m extremely worried about healing, a-little-more-grown-up Lydia’s characterization, so any feedback would be lovely, you lovely people.


End file.
